Cuban-Americans losing political power

Less than a week before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, I had breakfast with Rafael DÃÂ­az-Balart, the father of retiring U.S. Rep. Lincoln DÃÂ­az-Balart.

I didn't write a column based on that meeting, but I still remember what the patriarch of the DÃÂ­az-Balart family said about Cuba, how he viewed a Cuba without communism and how he wanted the organization he had founded many decades earlier, La Rosa Blanca, or "the White Rose," to play a role in bringing Cubans together for that day. In exile, he practiced what he preached, having close personal relations with people he disagreed with politically in years past.

DÃÂ­az-Balart, who served in Cuba's pre-Castro Senate, did not see his dream come true. He passed away on May 6, 2005. Now Lincoln will abandon Congress after almost two decades to pick up his father's mantle. A post-Castro Cuba will be better for it.

Lincoln's departure from Congress also benefits his brother Mario, also a Republican congressman from South Florida. On the day his brother said he was not running for re-election, Mario announced he would change districts and run in Lincoln's more Republican-friendly district.

The district that Mario vacates may yet be filled by another South Florida Republican, at least in the elections to be held this November. Without Barack Obama at the head of the ticket, it may be difficult for a Democrat to win that seat this year.

Past that, Lincoln's resignation is a clear signal that politics in South Florida are changing. When the Florida Legislature draws up new districts, according to the state's population as determined by this year's census, it will be hard to draw up three congressional districts in South Florida that will give the Republican Party three Cuban-American representatives.

The Cuban-American community in South Florida is no longer as homogeneous as it once was in opposition to Democratic candidates. The population of the area is changing. There are more non-Cuban Latins; more white and black Americans.

So as Lincoln comes back to the area to practice law and carry on his father's dream, the Cuban-American community will have to adapt to the idea that the Republican Party's grip on this area is likely to diminish. If not in 2010, then probably in 2012.